


I am a constant satellite

by boopboop



Category: The Martian (2015)
Genre: Family, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-10
Updated: 2015-10-10
Packaged: 2018-04-25 18:58:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4972576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boopboop/pseuds/boopboop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’re assholes, every last one of them, and Mark loves them even when they’re poking fun at him. Less than seventy two hours back in their company and they’re already giving him shit. He tells them that space rocks are better company and then falls asleep with his head against Johanssen's shoulder and with Vogel’s hand on his knee.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I am a constant satellite

**Author's Note:**

> Time for some Martian fluff, because why not?
> 
> The story will be open for a week, after which it will be locked for A03 members only.
> 
> Hope you enjoy this bit of fluffy silliness!

Mark Watney is an observant motherfucker.  He knows this not because he’s tooting his own horn - no horn or anything else has been tooted in a long fucking time - but because when your ability to Sherlock Holmes your way through life is not just essential to your continued survival but also your sanity, saying otherwise is just stupid. It’s reverse horn tooting, if such a thing exists. Horn sucking? Not much of that’s been done either.

Point being, he’s observant. He sees shit. The rest of the crew might think they are being subtle but they really fucking aren’t. And Mark, high on a fuckton of painkillers though he might be, can see right through them.

They aren’t treating him with the kid gloves. Not really. Not properly. And if they have been then Mark’s been a bit too out of it to really take much note. When he’s awake they behave like they always have done in the past. They’re assholes, every last one of them, and Mark loves them even when they’re poking fun at him. Less than seventy two hours back in their company and they’re already giving him shit. He tells them that space rocks are better company and then falls asleep with his head against Johanssen's shoulder and with Vogel’s hand on his knee. The Commander hovers in the doorway, her arms crossed over her chest and a look on her face that shifts between haunted and relieved. He wakes up to Martinez singing Abba and begs Beck to sedate him until they land back home.

Beck doesn’t actually sedate him, but there are complications and apparently Mark nearly dies - because why change the habit of a lifetime - and it’s over a hundred hours before he wakes up again, light as a feather, stiff as a board and also really fucking thirsty. He blinks open his eyes and stares right into Beck’s snoring face. The good doc is crashed out on the bed beside him, dark rings around his eyes and what sounds like a chainsaw rattling in his chest.

“Er…” Mark croaks, attracting the attention of Johanssen, who almost falls off the chair she’s curled herself into.

“Hey, hi!” She says. Her hair is so much longer than Mark remembers it being. “How’re you feeling?”

Mark takes a moment to think about that and finally decides that jello is his answer. He feels like jello. The green kind. The answer doesn’t phase her and she shrugs one of her shoulders.

“Yeah, we figured you’d be a bit weird when you woke up. Weirder, I mean. Apparently that’s normal when you break six ribs and pretend you’re in the Justice League.” She’s screwing with him, he knows she is, but he still groans.

“Oh come on, we talked about this. DC...Marvel, two very different things.” They have talked about it. In great detail. Vogel always threatens to shove them out of an airlock.

She grins at him and holds a bottle of water up, a straw extended for him to drink from. “Sure thing Iron Man.”

Besides Mark, Beck snores loudly. “There a reason the Doc’s snuggling me?” He’s still not complaining. And the question really isn’t ‘why is Beck napping on my bed with me?’ and more ‘why is Beck not yelling at me for nearly dying on his watch?’.

“Lewis drugged him.” Johanssen says with a shrug. “Well technically Vogel drugged him but she made the call.”

Beck snores loudly - indignantly, Mark thinks in wonder - but doesn’t move.

“I don’t care how many different drugs I’m on, when he wakes up and realizes what happened you either wake me, or you video it. Wait, do both, you should do both.” He stares at Beck, who has raised his voice exactly three times in all the years Mark has known him, and imagines a scenario in which he’s such a stubborn asshole that the Commander has to take an executive decision on letting him remain conscious. “That’s amazing. I’m amazed. He’s going to kill someone. Me, probably, I’m convenient.”

“He spent sixty eight hours trying to rearrange your insides. He’s more likely to kill Vogel.”

“That’s true,” Mark muses. Beck and Vogel have this half funny half weird semi science frat bro thing going where they occasionally feel the need to arm wrestle and talk about squat techniques. That’s some major betrayal of the bro code right there. Poor Beck.

“You should try avoid nearly dying in the future,” Johanssen says. “He’s a total asshole when he thinks you’re about to croak.”

“Got it,” Mark says. “No nearly dying. It’s immortality or bust.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Johanssen says, leaning down and kissing his cheek. “We like you best when you’re alive.” She’s settled into something more serious, her fingers warm on his arm and his cheek tingling where she kissed it. His eyes start to burn and he needs a moment, remembering now that there will be an audience for his tears if he lets them fall.

She must sense that because she moves towards the door to leave him in peace. She pauses before she vanishes around the corner and flashes a grin over her shoulder. “God knows why.”

He clearly sleeps through any Beck Vs Lewis showdown but Martinez takes great pains to tell him all the gorey details. He wants to watch the movie in high definition because neither Lewis or Beck are the shouting, angry types and yet apparently…

“It was scary,” Martinez says with relish. “And kinda hot.”

“You need to get laid,” Mark tells him.

“You volunteering buddy? Because Beck will kill me - like, one hundred percent dead kill me - if your blood pressure so much as wobbles.”

“Damn right I will,” Beck says from behind him. Mark jumps at the sound of his voice, forgetting for a second that the people they are talking about are actually here with them. Martinez doesn’t, he just flashes Beck a smile. “Stop sexually harassing my patient, Martinez,” Beck says, circling around to the side of Mark’s bed.

“I think you’ll find he came on to me,” Martinez argues.

“He has a hundred and three degree temperature,” Beck says. “He’s delirious.”

“He’s right here you know,” Mark cuts in, waving one hand weakly to attract attention. “You’re so fluffy. How are you so fluffy?” Beck’s wearing his oversized blue sweater, the one with the high neck and the extra fuzzy sleeves.

“Go to sleep, Watney,” he says, adjusting something in one of the hundred and one IVs Mark’s hooked up to.

“You go to sleep,” Mark mumbles, already half under. It’s not fair, Beck cheats. He says so, or tries to, and falls asleep mid-word.

He sleeps and wakes in what seems like an infinite loop. Most of the time he can’t tell the two apart. On Mars he’d dreamed of the things that happen now when he is awake - of his crew, his friends, their odd little family. Now, on the Hermes, he dreams of things that happened before. It’s disorientating and he wakes up screaming more than once.

He’s never alone. Beck might as well be glued to his bedside - “I’m your doctor, dipshit,” - but he’s usually joined by one of the others. They sit on his bed and play cards, or chess or tic-tac-toe. Martinez continues to sing Abba. Vogel reads to him. Johanssen takes to napping while curled up in a ball at his feet and they all drag Lewis into their various debates. Mark’s fallen asleep during every single one of them but his vote counts double on principle. The more he sleeps the more he wakes, the more he thinks that maybe things are okay now.

He starts sleeping less and staying awake longer, the stretches of time slowly switching and settling into a more natural pattern. That’s not to say he doesn’t sleep for two thirds of the day, because he does, but he doesn’t pass out halfway through arguments over which superhero has the coolest costume.

On the face of things, they’re all still the same. He’s not, he knows he’s not, and maybe he’s looking at them through an altered filter but he doesn’t think so. They’ve all changed. Individually and as a group.

When he wakes this time he’s cocooned in some kind of cloud, warm and snuggly and clean and not in pain, and he thinks he’s sleeping still. He was, last he checked. Last Beck checked as well, because he has his back to the bed. He stays quiet, not because he knows Beck will fuss like a den mother if he knows Mark is awake, but because he might throw up if he moves, and that’s not top of his list of cool things to do for the day. Beck can mother him all he wants, and Mark’s not stupid enough to expect otherwise, but a line needs to be drawn at vomit. Also his ribs are firmly against the idea. Mark respects their wishes because after hurling them through a planetary atmosphere it’s really the least he can do.

But Beck’s shoulders are doing that hunchy thing they do when he’s grumpy or pissed or hasn’t slept in a while and since Beck is second in implacability only to the Commander, Mark figures that’s probably not a good thing. And also likely his fault. Or Mars’s fault at least. He’s going with that. He takes a moment to acknowledge the fact that he can literally blame a whole planet for pretty much everything from this point on and giggles.

Beck jerks and bangs his head against one of the medical containment boxes, then swears, loudly and creatively. When he turns around his brow is furrowed and worried but he starts to smile when he sees Mark awake and it doesn’t stop growing until it fills his face completely.

“What’s up, doc?” Mark asks.

“Not you,” Beck says, moving closer and placing his fingers on Mark’s wrist to check his pulse. He’s got monitors and scanners and all the bells and whistles hooked up around him, but Beck’s endearingly old school about some things. That includes his belief that a doctor needs to actually put his hands on his patient every now and then and not just rely on his tech. Mark’s not complaining, not one bit. “You’re supposed to be sleeping,” Beck tells him.

“I am. Was. Might still be, actually,” Mark says. He doesn’t think he’s going to puke his guts up and that’s a pretty massive win. “Am I?”

“Asleep?” Beck asks, his fingers still curled around Mark’s wrist. “Is that what you think?”

Mark takes a moment, pauses, frowns. “No. If I was dreaming we’d be doing things that would get me in trouble with my doctor.”

Beck’s fingers leave him and settle neatly against the sheets. “Mark…”

Mark doesn’t know what he’s going to say, only that Beck has his serious face on and that usually means he ends up hearing things he doesn’t want to. “It’s okay,” he blurts. “I get it.”

“I doubt it,” Beck replies.

“No, no I do.” Mark waves his hand in an absent arc. He hopes it manages to be more eloquent than he is.

“You really don’t.”

“I do.”

“You don’t!”

“I do!”

Beck throws his arms in the air and shoves himself away from the bed. “Do you have to be such an argumentative dick?”

“I think it’s genetic,” Mark says. “You’ve met my parents.” And just like that, Beck’s lips form a thin, unhappy line. “Oh.” Mark says, getting it. He’s tried his hardest not to think about what the crew might have been doing and thinking and feeling after they left him. He’s had enough of his own emotional baggage to even think about dealing with anyone else’s and they are all working overtime not to bleed on each other. “Right. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” Beck says softly. His fingers return to Mark’s wrist, then move lower, until they can entwine together with Mark’s fingers. He’s forgotten what it feels like to hold someone’s hand.

“I’m an asshole.”

“Yes you are,” Beck agrees, bringing their joint hands up until he can rest his head against them. “I need you to get better, okay? I’m gonna take care of you. But I need you to get better.”

“Top of my to do list,” Mark promises.

There’s a brief, feather light touch of Beck’s lips against his knuckles and then he’s moving away. “Get some rest.”

“Come be my cuddle buddy.”

“I’ll be your cuddle buddy!” Martinez cheerfully announces his entrance with the promise of hugs. It’s a good greeting.

“You’re not fluffy,” Mark complains. “Beck is fluffy.” It’s the sweaters. And okay, the shoulders play a part. And the arms. Everything above the belt. Below the belt stuff will have to wait until his ribs have reorganized themselves. And he can sit upright.

Martinez looks mildly affronted. “Excuse you, I’m the epitome of cuddliness.”

“And Beck is cuddlier, I’m just saying. It’s not a personal affront.”

“Why are we insulting Martinez?” Lewis asks as she follows Vogel through the door.

Martinez turns to them, looking for support. “Apparently pretty boy makes a better bunk buddy than I do, can you believe it?”

“Can we not be having this conversation?” Beck asks loudly.

“No no,” Johanssen adds the final nail to Beck’s coffin as she takes her spot at the end of the bed. “We need to discuss this.”

“For science,” Mark nods solemnly.

Johanssen and Martinez begin to loudly discuss the parameters of their proposed experiments and Beck leans in close, so only Mark can hear him. “If I end up shirtless I promise you I’ll make your pee fluorescent blue.”

Mark gives him his best beguiling smile as the rest of the crew weigh in on the discussion. He falls asleep before Martinez takes his shirt off, and he’s grateful for small mercies.

He’s more grateful still for the living, breathing pillow he finds himself tucked up against.

“Told you,” Mark mumbles, still mostly asleep, safe and heading home and with his family, “fluffy.”

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
